1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to computers, and in particular to computer ports. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a system, method and computer program product for monitoring of port activity in a computer system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A computer can be viewed, in a simple perspective, as a set of hardware that manipulates data by executing instructions found in software. In some instances, the computer interacts with other computers, in order to achieve some ultimate processing goal. For example, a first computer may monitor for data or an other signal from another computer, in order to process that data or other signal. This is known as an inter-computer data exchange.
In other instances, certain software or hardware components, which are internal to a same computer, may monitor for data or an other signal from another internal software or hardware component in the same computer. This is known as an intra-computer data exchange.
In either case (intra-computer or inter-computer data exchanges), this monitoring is known as monitoring of port activity, since different software can exchange data directly by using a virtual data connection called a software port, and different hardware can exchange data via real or virtual interface plugs called hardware ports. Either type of data exchange and/or monitoring requires computations that are asynchronous to the execution of a main process running in the first computer.